Will my work peers respect me enough to network with me, share my social media posts, and refer me to potential clients?

Will my family and friends respect that I have the skills to work as a freelance writer and that working freelance from home is a ‘proper job’?

This took a slight change of mind set.

Can I take myself seriously as a freelance writer?

If I can do that, if I can respect my skills, experience and the value I can offer to a client, then the rest – respect from clients, work peers, family and friends – will follow on.

How will I find customers?

This is the dilemma all self employed people face. Where do we find work leads?

There’s no easy fix here. It’s a case of hard work and perseverance:

figuring out who your customer is

finding out where your customer is

deciding what your customer wants

I work for other businesses so an ideal place for me to find customers is LinkedIn, the business social network.

And yes, you do need to network. And yes, you do need to research what your customers want. And finally, yes, you do need to get involved in marketing your business.

Like I said, it’s hard work but worth it.

The legal stuff

This is the nitty gritty element that many people forget about when starting up in business.

However enthusiastic and excited you are about setting up your new business, the backbone of that business will be issues like tax, customer contracts and data protection.

I worried about this the most. The idea of drafting contracts and safeguarding customer data terrified me, so l grabbed another piece of paper and my trusty pen and broke it all down.

Registering as self employed

Accounting

Tax, national insurance and tax returns

Business insurance

Data protection

Customer contracts

Then I researched the hell out of all of these subjects. The HMRC provide plenty of useful online guides, and I turned to an accountant friend, the wonderful Ruth Prins who provides accounting services for small business owners, for advice.

Other places that proved invaluable in finding out about the legal stuff were the business groups I joined on Facebook, for instance: